For those who might have missed the most important news from the past week in the competitive Dota2 scene, here is a short recap.
Tournament news:
Mars Dota2 League (MDL) 2017 Postponed
After announcing MDL Spring 2017 in November last year, Mars Media (the organisers of MDL) have announced on their Facebook page that the tournament is going to be pushed back to a later date. MDL was pushed back due to some teams' concerns about organisation of travel between the Kiev Major - Valve's first in Eastern Europe - and MDL in China within a few days. Although a new date has not been set, Mars Media have said that MDL 2017 will occur sometime before The International 2017.
Alliance, NP and Complexity are yet to receive their payment from Northern Arena
According to a report made by theScore esports last night, there are several Dota 2 teams who haven’t received their prize pool money from Northern Arena. While it is uncertain how many from the eight participants haven’t been payed yet, the runners up NP, Alliance, placed 5th/6th and CompLexity Gaming, placed 7th/8th at the LAN event, have confirmed to theScore esports that they are yet to receive their prize money. Their winnings combined raise the owned sum at $26,000, from the $100,000 total prize pool of Northern Arena Beat Invitational.
The Kiev Major direct invites have been announced
The Kiev Major is the first to be held in Eastern Europe and the first to feature separate CIS and South American qualifiers. The eight teams selected by Valve to skip the qualifier process are:
Wings Gaming
OG
Ad Finem
Team Liquid
Evil Geniuses
Digital Chaos
Newbee
VG J
Team announcements:
Mushi and kYxY to stand in for Mineski Malaysia at the Kiev Major open qualifiers
Renamed from Mineski-X to Mineski Malaysia, the squad will compete in the Kiev Major SEA open qualifiers with Mushi. At the same time, Lee 'kYxY' Kong Yang, who last time was seen playing for White Fries Gaming in the StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 3 Chinese qualifiers, appears now as stand in for Mineski Malaysia.
Newbee.Boss to use EHOME’s old eLeVeN for the Kiev Major open qualifiers
Newbee surprised everyone with their secondary team announcement from January when they revealed Newbee.Boss with a female player standing next to the legendary xioa8, Ferrari_430 and Chuan. However, after a disappointing run in the DAC Chinese qualifiers, Newbee.Boss decided to bench the 8K MMr female, Axx for the Kiev Major open qualifiers. EHOME’s offlaner old eLeVeN.
Russian Football Club Anji creates eSports Division, signs XBOCT as first player
Russian based FC Anji announced the formation of their eSports division for DOTA2. Along with the announcement came their first player: former Na'Vi and CIS legend Alexander 'XBOCT' Dashkevich. The other four playersl joining XBOCT however, still remain a mystery and will be announced soon according to FC Anji. It will be exciting to see how this new CIS squad turns out, and we also look forward to XBOCT's peformance in the upcoming Kiev Open Qualifiers.
Kemal Sad?ko?lu is no longer Team Secret’s Director
Team Secret announced managerial staff changes, the Turkish businessman Kemal Sad?ko?lu stepping down from the Team Director position. Today, Team Secret announced John Yao as the new CEO. In their own secretive manner, the organization gave little to no details about John Yao, only saying that he “brings seasoned executive experience to the team, an impressive track record of business success, and perhaps most importantly - a passionate devotion to Team Secret’s mission.”
ArtStyle join Virtus Pro as their coach
As a part of their preparations for the Kiev Major 2017, The Virtus.pro organization decided to boost up their team by adding some well esteemed members to their already impressive team. Artstyle, who held the International Champion title in 2011 and had a very successful track record with Natus Vincere, has been dropped from the Ukrainian team in November last year and hasn't join any other squad since then.
The five Greeks runners up at the Boston Major leave the Ad Finem organization
According to a short announcement made via the Ad Finem facebook page, the five players decided not to renew their contracts with the organization.No other details were given, but close sources of the team told GosuGamers that the five Greek players are already discussing with other organizations. The departure of the entire team from the Ad Finem organization will not affect in any way their direct invite to the Kiev Major as long as the five players stick together.
